Energy honours and holiday news roundup

Utility Week rounds up key utilities news from the festive break and identifies energy personnel recognised in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list.

New Year Honours – energy sector recipients:

Two CBEs were awarded to energy sector leaders. One to Andrew Garrad for services to renewable energy, who retired as a member of the DNV GL Energy Supervisory Board in December, and the other to former Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) director for international Energy, EU and resilience, Edmund Hosker for services to energy policy.

OBEs were awarded to former chair of the UK Office of Renewable Energy Bernard Bulkin, and former SSE policy and research director Keith Maclean, both for services to the energy industry; Department for Business, energy and industrial Strategy (BEIS) assistant director for EU consumer policy Gaynor Jeffery for services to consumer rights; and former Decc lawyer Caroline Ross for legal services to international climate change negotiations.

Sylvia Hornsby was awarded a MBE for services to public administration and charity for her work as a personal assistant at Decc.

In case you missed it – other utilities news from the festive season:

Thousands of customers in southwest London without water on Christmas Day following a pump failure at Hampton water works. The company has launched an investigation into the cause of the fault.

A trio of wind energy records were also set at the end of December. New half-hourly, daily and weekly records were set on 23, 24 and 25 December.

Wind power supplied a new high of 41 per cent of the UK’s electricity needs in a half-hour period on Christmas Day, smashing the previous record of 34 per cent. During this period, 47 per cent of the UK’s electricity came from renewable sources.

A new daily record of 32 per cent of UK electricity was generated by wind on Christmas Day, beating the previous high by 8 per cent. One fifth of UK electricity was generated by wind in the week ending 25 December, exceeding the previous 19 per cent record.

Energy giant Eon announced it will offer around 1,000 apprenticeships across Europe in 2017, with 100 of these being in the UK.

Eon chairman Johannes Teyssen said: “With our large number of apprenticeships we are taking responsibility for the future of many people.

“The better our apprentices are qualified, the greater their contribution to the innovative power and competitiveness of our company, all of which benefits our customers.”

Within government, there was a slight reshuffle at BEIS as Baroness Neville-Rolfe has departed her post as minister to join the Treasury as its new commercial secretary. She has been replaced by Lord Prior of Brampton who previously served as an under-secretary at the Department of Health.